On a beautifully warm and sunny Tuesday evening in Brighton a fantastic sextet of GoodGymers turned up to tackle tonight’s gardening task. Last week the group were told that GG Worthing trainer, Julia would be leading while Tara and Helena were in the Peak District on their running holiday so there were a few surprised faces when I turned up (even more so that it was before the warm-up!).

Following a quick catch-up with everyone and discussion around the GG Olympics (sign up here by 3rd June!) and any recent PBs or races that people had coming up, the group set-off on a short but brisk kilometre run to help with the gardening at Sloane Court. Sloane Court is a council residency for the over 55’s that resident, Anthony has been single-handedly (along with the occasional group run and mission visits from the GoodGym Brighton group) transforming the overgrown and untended too gardens into his long-term garden vision of a summer plant haven.

When we arrived we were met by Anthony who explained what weeding needed to be done in the back gardens. But first there was the quick job of moving a bench from the patio to underneath some trees in the middle of the garden which Sherman and Rikesh made short work of, displaying excellent lifting technique in the process!

The group then split into two groups with Sherman and Michael tackling the rear plant bed and Laura, Frannie and Mikesh the front plant bed. Everyone chose their tool/weapon of choice to tackle the task and quickly set about weeding and clearing. After a fun-filled 40 minutes of weeding and wheelbarrow runs, amongst discussing puns and names with Anthony, there was a marked difference made to both plant beds.

We posed for the obligatory post-task group photo, and had a brief final chat with Anthony who reiterated how chuffed he is that we help he out with the garden. We then both said our thank yous and goodbyes, and headed the short distance to the picturesque Queens Park Gardens for a ‘lovely’ fitness session. – the ‘SMS number’ challenge. The challenge involved everyone completing the corresponding exercises to their SMS number (for example, 0 = 30 x burpees – since I know everyone loves burpees!!) followed by a short 10m recovery jog uphill to the tree after each exercise. Laura claimed to not know her number off-by-heart so she had the added bonus of working chronologically down the list of numbers and corresponding exercises.

Everyone committed 100% to the exercises and there were raised pulses and redder faces with minutes. One photo full of grimaces highlights the top effort put in by everyone on the fitness session. Frannie was the run-away winner and as her 'punishment' to the others chose that no-one could run ahead of her on the run back to base – this provided a lovely photo op of everyone running together down the Brighton hills with the backdrop of the setting sun. It wasn’t long before we were back at base where we all had a quick cool down and stretch, before saying our goodbyes.

Thank you for the company and all your hard work today guys, I do miss my Tuesday evenings down in Brighton with you all! Best of luck to Rikesh with the Phuket move and to Michael with the Lakeland Trail Half next month.

Next week’s task is “Clearing vegetation at the bottom of Elm Grove”! Sign-up here.